Indian e-commerce industry is mainly driven by young and working demographic profile that prefers online mode of shopping. This is further coupled by the rising smartphones and internet penetration that provides the easy access to e-commerce sites. There are several remarkable policies announced in the past few years, which primarily include opening up more to foreign investments. This could be clearly seen through the ‘Make in India’ initiative, a national programme of the Government of India, which is implemented with the objective to facilitate investment, enhance skill development, protect intellectual property, foster innovation, and build best in class manufacturing infrastructure in the country. Among all these mentioned objectives, the core ones being- to strengthen the nation’s manufacturing sector and consequently attract investments from across the globe seem to match even with the concurrent scenarios post COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
It is worth mentioning that due to the outburst of coronavirus in the nation, the Government of India imposed a nationwide lockdown, pioneering the ‘Lockdown 1.0’ which was effective from 25th of March 2020. As of 23rd May 2020, the country is in the fourth phase of the lockdown as ‘Lockdown 4.0’ which is primarily focusing on the agenda of being ‘Vocal for Local’. Clearly stating to focus on enhancing the local production, it parallelly matches with the core outline of ‘Make in India’ initiative. Moreover, IMF underlined India’s position to a point, where it can successfully rejuvenate the global growth, transform global patterns of trade, and spur investment and innovation- which again coincides with the initiative’s objective. This local production is sure to encourage a relatively better economic performance than the current one, which will further spur the Indian e-commerce industry in the forthcoming time.
Another campaign administered by the Government of India named Digital India, is again expected to spur the Indian e-commerce industry. Looking at the product flow cycle of e-commerce right from the order placing by the customer, the real-time tracking of the order, and the final dispatch of the order also involving the digital mode of payments; e-commerce sales directly fosters the digitalization. Moreover, due to the implementation of social distancing in the country, the online ordering and sales is expected to gain traction in this time of pandemic. Further, online sales offer lower price of goods due to direct distribution channel and economies of scale. The major companies such as Amazon and Flipkart in the market are focusing on improving the delivery services by providing same day delivery in the major cities of the country while at the same time, also reaching and connecting rural India, which consist of one third of the Indian population.
The ongoing digital transformation in the country is expected to increase the total internet user base of India to 829 million by 2021 from 560.01 million as of September 2018, according to the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF). However, the quarantine scenario has definitely surpassed the current estimations. This is also seen in collaboration with the dependence on e-commerce sites for even the day to day commodities such as groceries due to practicing of social distancing and avoidance of going to the grocery stores and malls in the country. Thus, all these factors are expected to provide a boost to the Indian e-commerce industry.
